[p2p-research] transparent trade

[Kevin Carson]

[from Steve Herrick]

> Kevin, this was a particularly interesting essay. Five years ago, I did a
> serious analysis of the fair-trade system, and found it to be lacking. In
> its place, I decided the thing to create was a mutual certification system
> made up of a rotating and volunteer committee of distributors, consumers,
> and even competitors, who would make frequent site visits to each other. As
> it turned out, that was too ambitious to pull off. So, in its place, I
> founded Just Things, as the next-best way to connect producers and
> consumers. Unfortunately, I was only able to keep that going for a year.
> Still, I’m very interested in such things.

Thanks a lot, Steve.  My impression of Fair Trade organizations is
that they fit into Paul
Goodman's typology of large, hierarchical organizations with Weberian
work rules, mission statements, and all the rest of it.  Just another
example of the way the organizational style of the large corporation,
government agency, etc., has contaminated the "nonprofit" and
"cooperative" sector.

IMO free market certifications of quality, safety, trustworthiness,
etc., will look a lot more like Angie's List and Rate My Doctor.  The
tipping point will occur when the average person starts to realize
that all the government's regulations are just minimalist,
dumbed-down, least common denominator standards, and don't really do
much to protect him from the crooks out there.  At that point, looking
at the networked rating/certification systems to check the history of
the people they do business with will start becoming automatic
behavior  for most people.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html